The Fantastic Planet

...is one of my favorite movies of all time. this is a 1973 czech/french animation that has just been rescored with an electronica soundtrack. definitely look for the original because this version is a little scary with the now-included panic-inducing sounds of aphex twin. i first saw this as a double feature with TRON in 1982 in my little hometown (northern california farming town) with my mom. i can't imagine what she must have thought (southern belle).

must
check
out

way ahead of its time.

Makin' Out in the Makeout Room

last night guy surprised me with a show. it was TIPSY at the makeout room. they were great. the tiny japanese girl on bass was my favorite. oh, and the drummer. he was very active. i told guy his activity let us know exciting stuff was happening. guy said the japanese girl was just like the "12345s." i laughed. he meant the 5678s made famous from appearing in Kill Bill.

at the end of the show, we got into a booth and made out.

Something you should maybe NOT make a bong out of

providence friend (T) sent me this: here.

spoon

i can't stop listening to Gimme Fiction.

footgasm

it's a form of entertainment that can be had anywhere: ignore a big foot itch for as long as possible and experience it morphing into something resembling an orgasm.

i wonder how much better this would be for a foot fetishist.

I found it!

my second career.

copywriting.

a long time ago, i wrote some copy for a grateful dead merchandising catalog and was told, "hey, you're really good at this. you should be a copywriter." flash forward 15 years and i'm doing a little copywriting for guy's company and getting a tremendous response. TODAY, i overhear some designers who work on the Nike account saying, "oh man, i can't write this, i'm not a copywriter..." and i spoke up. i told them, I can do that. copywriting is my side project...and i got the work. so, tonight i get a call from the head of the Nike account, who's spouting relief that i'm going to write this copy, and, she had to check twice, "you can do it tonight?!"

so i sit down and i start writing and i'm pretty much done in 10 minutes. add another 20 for finessing and i'm completely finished. this leaves me with a feeling of total STOKE-ED-NESS. like, i can DO something. shit. it's such a great feeling and it occurs to me,
that maybe
i have found
my new career.

stay tuned.

Synesthesia

info on this "phenomenon."


** the above art is by jeremy blake. an amazing artist showcased in pt anderson's punch drunk love (highly highly recommended)

I learned to spell Lysergic Acid Diethylamide a long time ago

where did all the acid go like five years ago? what the hell happened?
ah, maybe this is what:

Illicit Distribution:
In 1999, 2000, and 2001, there were 1,641, 1,435, and 1,325 exhibits reported to the National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS), respectively. In 2002 the number of exhibits dropped dramatically to 249 exhibits. This sharp decline resulted from the seizure of a large LSD lab in Kansas City. With the arrest of clandestine chemists and with the dismantling of their laboratory, within 2 years, the availability of LSD in the United States was reduced by 95%. The number of seized LSD samples, analyzed in forensic laboratories, remained low for 2003, 2004, and 2005, there were 310, 312, and 502 exhibits.
(source)

Chemistry and Pharmacology:
High doses of LSD can induce a "bad trip" characterized by intense anxiety or panic, confusion, and combative behaviors. After a LSD trip, a user may also experience fatigue, acute anxiety or depression for 12 to 24 hours (i never got that from LSD like i get it from being around my dad).

LSD induces a heighten awareness of sensory input , that is accompanied by an enhanced sense of clarity (gift), but reduced ability to control what is experienced. The LSD trip is made up of perceptual and psychic effects (gift). A user may experience the following perceptual effects: visual distortion in the size and shape of objects, movements, color, sound, touch, and the user's own body image. The user may report "hearing colors" or "seeing sounds." (this is called synesthesia, the DEA doesn't apparently know that). The psychic effects experienced by the user may include a feelings of obtaining true insight (gift), intensified emotions, sudden and dramatic mood swings, impairment of attention, concentration and motivation (impairment of motivation? uh, i think that's ok, because, like, i'm seeing inside your head), distortion of time and depersonalization.

(source)


ps. this DEA document is so laden with editorial and grammatical errors, i will not try to fix them all.

Lucy in the Sky

taking a break from work to reminisce about LSD.

not surprisingly...i cannot rem...wait, yes i can remember: just one blotter image that went into my mouth - windows. for window pane.
OH! and there was some 4-way that had a purple star or a purple donald duck? i'll have to check with a friend on that one.

exercise for wednesday, june 28: try really hard to remember what pictures you ate. if you think hard enough, you just might start to feel something.

Get me outta this life!

my work is designing graphics, both small and humongous, for tradeshows for a particular gigantic corporate company in the computer industry. i don't so much "design" as i "follow rules," "brand standards" as they are called. basically i plug in photographs and lay out typography. it's not a bad job, i mean, pay wise, it allows me to live in san francisco and still eat dinner every night, which i didn't do for years when i was working in the much-preferred newspaper industry.

ANYWAY, my company that works for this corporate dick company is into making the artists do all kinds of stuff besides art. yesterday in a meeting we were asked if we know how to design tradeshow floorplans. everyone maintained composure but i'm sure i'm not the only one who had this going on inside their mind, "NO! I'M A FUCKING ARTIST! I DRAW AND PAINT PORTRAITS! JESUS CHRIST!" as it turns out, i will soon be learning how to design tradeshow floorplans.

how did i get here?

i loved working for newspapers. especially very closely with editorial. laying out the front page at the 11th hour with two publishers and an editor yelling over my shoulder, very passionately screaming out headline after headline until we found what worked, are some of my best "career" memories. i function best under pressure. work is like bike riding for me. if i go too slow, i fall off. i need fast fast fast to maintain concentration.

as usual, though, when i start to feel this way about my job and career, i think about the guy i saw cleaning up errant trash blowing across the parking lot at the mcdonalds on potretro street. now that's a fucker of a job.

The Phobia List

very interesting.

look at this one: Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - Fear of the number 666
and this must be a joke:
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - Fear of long words.

another good word link

Fear of Colloquialisms

i have been asked by my friends to describe why hearing californians or east coasters, say "Ya'll" jerks my nerves around under my skin. the answer isn't immediately clear.

i was born in louisiana and have family there and grew up with "Ya'll." to clarify: i grew up with "Ya'll" spoken in a southern accent. my guess is i'm feeling something insincere or faddish about a non-southerner saying "Ya'll." like it's cute or something. the non-southerners in my life who say "Ya'll" are most definitely NOT insincere people and yet somehow i can't shake this feeling that it's being used in a "cute" manner. my family uses/used it but it isn't/wasn't a fad, and hearing it used that way feels like a joke is being made, even if that's not the intention.

does anyone know what this brain dysfunction is called? speaking of which i also have a fear of teenagers. this is known as: Ephebiphobia.

what happens on day 5682?

so, what exactly does this software do, do you think?

Fear of a Big Pickle

ok, i try not to repeat things here that i read on boing boing, too much since so many people read it anyway, but this is truly...something.

Diamonds in the Stanislaus

i push and push and push and finally, i squeeze it out. when the diamond finally pops out, it's saturday night, it's 1am and i'm sitting on a deck in Arnold, CA, leaning back looking at the space between the trees where the stars live, listening to guy's new band birth their own diamonds inside the A-frame behind me. i've just finished shooting many photos of the boys playing and i actually feel exhausted from it. my eyes burn and i think about the fat catalogue of photographs i've taken in the last few months and what the common thread might be that ties them together. my brain is sifting, it's working the granules hard, trying to refine what the pictures are saying or what they say about me, refine refine refine, grind it down to the essence. i'm sitting smoking, looking at the space, listening to some beautiful keyboard-plunky, light drum strummy, funk bass groovy, sing-song move-y music and BING! the answer comes to me. i'm amazed at it's simplicity and once again what a difficult task simplicity of thought is to accomplish in art. this is why i love pop art, but that's another story.

i've been in the woods 12 hours and it's starting to sink in. i can relax and do nothing. i take an hour nap upon arrival due to the bass player's wife (M) getting us super freakin' high in the car for the 3-hour drive to Arnold. the boys have transformed the living room of this very nice woodsy cathedral-ceilinged home, into some kind of monkey house musical playground with endless wires, amps, instruments and pieces of recording equipment covering most available living room space. the kitchen counters are a mosaic of fruit, plastic 7-11 peanuts, cookies, chips, bread and wild turkey. the fridge is filled with beer, vodka and lunch meat. (M) and i arrive a day after the boys, with two more overflowing bags of food and a cooler too. we've furnished the house with enough food for a week-long lock-in for the six of us. if only.

musical breaks allow us dips into the raging stanislaus river which reaches a peak temperature of 50 degress. the 100 degree weather outside has cooked our skin enough to create a sizzling sound as soon as we submerge ourselves in water as cold as the north western pacific. this provides much comedy as we scream and yelp and involuntarily engage in lamaze breathing upon entering the life-threatening river.

we eat well, we sleep well, we play well: guy is super lovey and sweet to me and i swoon. this bodes him well on the ride back.

then sunday we come home.

then monday we work.

next weekend: camping and tubing on cache creek. summer has really arrived.

Killer day (or the day that killed me)

let's see:
hungover, gyno visit, divorce court.

today is really shaping up!

In case you were wondering...

...yay!!

I'm with the band

backstage demeanor is ideally thus: loose arms at your side, no wringing of hands or clutching of elbows. do not put your arms behind your back or rock from side to side on the balls of your feet. you are hanging out. you are just spanning time with people who happen to be very famous, influential, legendary and cool. that's all. sure they can play guitar behind their heads and with their tongues, but you're cool too. you're just not famous, legendary or influential. the toughest trick is not staring. of course you cannot stare, but you want to look, so the pull is difficult to contend with. it's best to look up and around and at the legendary and cool in brief snatches. when you catch their eyes, it is essential to smile, then look away. basically you're not gonna get to look at them as much as you want and you have to accept that early on because it is imperative above all else that you don't appear to be a non-speaking starer. the good news is if you are successful at not annoying or making nervous the influential and famous, then you will be asked back into the inner circle, perhaps multiple times and that's when you can get some more looks in.

the best thing you can do, is start up conversation. don't ask them what they think of your town and try not to gush too much about how you love them. go about it in a circular manner. ask them what they think of the warm up bands, and did they pick them themselves? if they're sonic youth, they'll say they really like them and yes they did pick them, then you can say, "Oh, well i really loved so and so who opened for you in 1997, which was such a great show, GOD i loved how kim went crazy dancing to Dirty Boots, i had insane fun that night!" there, now you've gushed but in a conversational manner.

one thing you don't expect to happen is that you might get in a fight with the legendary, the cool, the influential. what you won't expect even more is that this is the best kind of encounter you can have. there's really no way you can pick this fight without being a dick, it has to be a result of just plain good luck based on a casual comment you make about music most likely. just stand your ground and pay attention, don't be scared and don't cry...remember you are cool too. what's remarkable about this is that you just had an argument with a musically historical figure. in a way, you have incorporated yourself into history. rockin! and you have a kickass story to tell for years.

xo

A Sucker for Sugar

what is it about endearments? "hi sweetie! what can i get you?" i fall for this shit every morning at my Castro starbucks where endearments run rampant. somehow i interpret the salutation as empathetic, i look at the smiling, genuinely warm face of my local sugary starbucks guy and i find myself adoring him. it's like he knows me and he CARES. what are other neighborhood coffee shop baristas like in the morning? often they are as grumpy as you. often they don't say hello, good morning, they'll look at you dryly, wait for your order, fill it and say "Next." but not at my castro starbucks. there i get sunshine and sugar, straight up every morning.

Answer the question, Claire

there's a new instant messaging program set up at work for everyone to use to talk about each other behind everyone else's back (iChat). each individual gets to choose a little jpeg picture that sits right next to their name in the window...i chose Claire from the Breakfast Club. the funny thing is a little word bubble pops up from the picture to indicate the picture is "talking" (why is this coming out so clumsy? technology is difficult to describe). i immediately IM-ed two different people with this word bubble: "and so this asshole wouldn't leave me alone! he kept yelling at me! he kept saying, 'Are you a virgin CLAIRE?! Answer the QUESTION CLAIRE! ANSWER THE QUESTION!' it was humiliating! but then after detention, we totally made out because he was kind of hot, in a bad boy way."

so IM-ed this to two different people and they had no idea what i was talking about. NO IDEA. clearly the Breakfast Club is not a part of any generation past "X". no one born after 1970 has a clue. unbelievable. i'll have to be more careful not to waste such a good joke next time.

da da! da da da da da DA!

i have a backstage pass to see sonic you-outh! i have a backstage pass to see sonic you-ou-ou-outh!!!! la la la la la!! yeah yeah yeah yeah!! oooh, sonic you-ou-outh!"

"Say 'con call' again. SAY 'CON CALL' AGAIN!!"

your cat's vicious!

yay lewis!!

lewis sounds much like my male cat syd, who was born in 1991: "the year punk rock finally broke" (to quote kim gordon) and named after the most lame yet most recognizable punk rocker ever: sid vicious.

syd the cat is "vicious" and has pokey black fur, thus the tribute. one other thing he has in common with sid vicious is his extreme pussy-ism. he acts all macho, and likes to bite but when the real shit comes down (other cats, racoons, vacuum cleaners) he's the first one under the bed.
LOVE SYD!

your cat's gay!

found this link on boing boing this morning. hot damn, that's inter-esting.

Learning to Deal

last night i talked on the phone with my ex-husband for a long time. he explained to me what his girlfriend is teaching him about Having to Deal. he said, You and I are very similar in this way. i agree.

i have to deal with getting a driver's license at some point. i have to deal with my fear of showing my art. i have to deal with my inability to handle money. i have to deal with insurance and bills, and other things i have neglected that involve paperwork and authority figures. i have to actually take steps, as in 1, 2, 3...towards making some of my creative ideas happen. i asked him why am i like this? why do i have these issues? what is wrong with me? what happened? and he said that basically my parents just didn't teach me these things. they did not teach me to take care of Things or Myself in certain ways. this sounds about right, my parents were too interested in holding on to me and controlling me (mom=hold on, dad=control). he said certain things were never impressed upon me as important to learn when i was younger. he explained how other people got driver's licenses because their parents somehow communicated that it's a good idea, that it's what people do. he said even though it's not easy for younger people To Deal, it's easiER than it is for 36-yr-olds because at 36, we just don't want To Deal. we have figured out ways around it and plain don't wanna do it. but we have to. It is of extreme importance to Start to Deal.

i am so happy that this has finally been explained to me. i feel like someone turned on a light. only now that i know, i really Have to Deal. fuck.

break-up

the only thing worse than breaking up with someone, is someone you love dying. in so many ways, they feel the same.

Suicide note by Garry Shandling

"I'm not mad at anybody.
this is just something I want to do for myself."

when asked if he wrote a suicide note, what it would say.

normalcy

friendly coffee shop girl says to me, "hello good morning dear! did you feel the earthquake this morning?" i'm really into earthquakes, i say "NO! i didn't! what was it?" she looks at me quizzically and i get the feeling she just moved to california, i rephrase my question, "how big was it?" "OH!" she says, "4-something. yeah, my whole room was shaking!" i walk away wondering if she asks every other person if they felt the earthquake. i cross the street and sit and wait for the bus and i can't stop thinking about it. how often does she ask people about the earthquake? does she like me? does she save that question for girls that she likes so she has something to say to them? does she look for a particular face that says to her, "this person will enjoy the convo about the earthquake this morning?" this is what fills my mind, wondering how it all works.

gay couple from kansas walks down castro, holds hands, takes pictures in front of "Castro" street sign. they're 45, they're huge, they're so happy. they can be super gay and no one bothers them about it. they are embraced and appreciated in a place where "different" is the majority. they go to drag shows and squeal and yelp and clap hands and say "Oh, GIRL, this is FUN!" they can't believe this shangri-la. they'd live here but they don't make enough money. this is freedom and it's expensive.

crazy-loud lady in baseball cap, purple jaggedy hair and sweatshirt celebrating sobriety chats on bus with young, hot guy holding cat in cat carrier on his lap. he wears cop glasses and five-day stubble. she says "how old is she?" he says, "he's 13" she says, "mine's 10" he smiles broadly and nods enthusiastically. it's the polite thing to do. this is cat chat on the 33 Stanyan.

this is sf on thursday morning. it's a pretty day. people walk around doing their stuff, whatever it is they do. they go, they sit, they eat, they talk, they walk their dogs. it's what happens everyday. this is ordinary. this is life. how weird.

work only day

sorry,
no breathing.
no time.
no eating.
no time.
no talking.
no time.
today is work only day.
only working is allowed.
the nazis have moved in.

this is not the kind of vice i'm into.

the truth in books

the best reading is real reading. it's the truth, stuff that's really happening, has happened, or partially happened. following are guaranteed good reads for most humans. these stories fall into three simple categories: drugs/alcohol, insanity and sex.

ps. i would love to receive some recommendations along these lines. there can never be enough and the good ones aren't easy to find.

1. i'm the one that i want - margaret cho
2. a million little pieces - james frey
3. my friend leonard - james frey
4. running with scissors - augusten burroughs
5. dry - augusten burroughs
6. the basketball diaries - jim carroll
7. forced entries - jim carroll
8. a life ill-equipped for sex - jennifer lehr
9. andy warhol's diaries - andy warhol
10. prozac nation - elizabeth wurtzel
11. call me crazy - anne heche
12. naked - david sedaris
13. me talk pretty one day - david sedaris
14. dress your family in corduroy and denim - david sedaris
15. diary of a pretty lady - sandra bernhard
16. my dark places - james ellroy

this list will undoubtedly be updated over time as all i can remember is generally only a fraction of everything.

"I'm gonna get a vagina soon!"

yesterday i met a client of guy's company who is a "person in transition." this is a person who is going through all the processes necessary to change their sex: therapy up the yang, hormones and genital surgery. this client is transitioning from a man to a woman. i have seen her a few times, but just briefly, out the car window, waiting for guy as he dashes into a warehouse and back out, but yesterday we spoke. she looked at me with purpose, through the back of the car as she loaded tubing. i smiled brightly and said "Hi!" and introduced myself. she did the same and looked deeply at me, a prolonged look, she searched for intolerance, some kind of flinch in my face indicating a negative reaction to a person who was quite obviously once a man and yet looks somewhat like a woman. she is a person who projects a strong feminine sense, yet sports strong male facial features. i could feel her vulnerability, her timidity and her strength all at once. she searched me for quite some time and she could have continued searching me without ever seeing any kind of judgement cross my face.

i admire those who have such conviction to fix a problem of this magnitude. i can't imagine not being supportive. what must it feel like to be stuck in the wrong gender?

as we pull away from the warehouse i tell guy that i've just met who he calls "my person in transition" and he starts singing a song in his OCD voice, "i'm gonna get a vagina soooooon. i'm gonna get a vagiiiiina sooon!!! i'm gonna get a vagiiiina!" i crack up and stroke the back of his neck, adoring his childlike outlook as he sings some more, "i'm gonna get a vagiiina! i'm gonna get a vagina soooon!"

don't say "panty"

so i received a coupon the other day from victoria's secret. it says if i come into the store, they'll give me a free "panty" in either black, pink or white. i ask guy, "so which one should i get? pink, white or black?" he thinks for a moment and then he says, "i don't know, they all look good on you."

this made me laugh and laugh. like my underwear is going to compliment my eye color.

Thanks for another devastatingly fun weekend (YES)

friday: whoa. work was light and people were mad for beer by 4 o'clock. my coworker, a senior artist, a madman, came up to me at 4pm saying "uh, we need to get a cup of coffee. i'm buying." he was frighteningly serious. the blood ran from my face. the last time this happened it really was serious. i asked him, "do you need to talk to me about something serious?" in a shaky voice to which he replied gravely, YES. we walked down the stairs and out the door when he finally relieved me with, "well, we're not actually going to get coffee, we're going to get a shot, and it's not that serious." i exhaled heavily and we laughed. the relief he was searching for was accomplished inside a tequila shot and half a corona within the next ten minutes. and he, like most people who know me, knows that i am always a willing accomplice for pretty much any mission at all. this ensures that i am always the chosen one as i do not argue, i do not question motives, i just say YES.

an hour later, the rest of the department was crying Beer O'clock and we all bailed by 5:30. nice.

not so nice: i get rather lit before it is even dark and and have to hold onto the arm of my friend and coworker (J) to keep from eating asphalt on the walk home. get there early (9pm), just in time for guy to come home from his bar jaunt. he laughs at me and says, you're drunk! i argue playfully, no i'm not! all the while we're cracked, we're doubled over, our energies are causing a tornado, our energies are spinning mid-air through the living room, not dying, not landing for several hours, we cackle cackle we wrestle wrestle, i make shrimp and avocado salad and sear mahi for guy, a two course meal. at midnight we finally sleeeeeeep.

SAT: wake up slow, do favor for friend (E), drive him to daly city to pick up car, afterwards do vodka shots at 2pm, smoke bongs, leave (E), go to fish market and buy delicious delicious delicious seafood. get dozen raw oysters, sashimi grade raw ahi tuna and swordfish, fresh organic vegetables, we laugh and laugh, i can see inside guy, he is so...so...AHHHH, i just LOVE HIM!
then we go home. i proceed to chop and marinade and cook for the rest of the afternoon. make tuna poke for the first time.
oh
my
god.
it's amazing. guy shucks all 12 oysters for us, we slurp them down, we are in heaven, this is all we ever want to eat, it is food from the gods. we hang out, listen to music, eat, cook. around 8pm guy poses interesting question, "wanna do mescaline?" uh, well, i've never said no to psychedelics (or really anything for that matter: YES), but i know what he's talking about, he's talking about this teeny tiny microscopic amount of lab-derived, authentic chemist-made MESC powder that we've had for months. i've never believed it to be enough to do anything to us, thus it's long life. BUT EH, sure why not i say and we snort it. OUCH. it hurts. i go outside and start watering my plants, really positive that nothing will happen. guy follows me five minutes later, his face is all puffy and red and his eyes are tiny, he says "i feel like i'm tripping. i'm tripping. uh, i AM tripping! i'm seeing...oh, yeah, i am seeing..." and just as i'm starting to complain that everything affects him so much stronger than me, i realize i'm feeling sort of "inside," that i'm feeling exclusive to myself, that i am, without a doubt, feeling that psycho-delic buzz, and i go inside and get some water and i catch light waves off the kitchen chairs. ha ha ha ha ha! how funny, we laugh and laugh. "we were just hanging out and now we're fully psyched-out!" we tell each other. we turn on the beatles for some reason, i guess it's instinctive, because it's perfect. we melt into the sofa and listen and dream. later we dance around in our "most comfortable clothes ever" and we kiss a lot and everything feels AMAZING and looks BEAUTIFUL. MAGIC TIME.

after a few hours of blatant silliness we decide to get in bed. we roll the TV into the bedroom and plug in FEAR and LOATHING. i've seen the movie a half dozen times but i never laugh as hard as i do this time. i say out loud, GOD BLESS JOHNNY DEPP. guy agrees with me, we wrap our legs together and fall asleep by 1:30 am.

SUN: photo shoot with guy's band. fun. i take photos, we drink tecate, we come home by 10pm, we go to bed, exhausted and delighted by yet another devastatingly fun weekend.

xo

Addendum to "The end of the world"

in a story twist, my baptist-christian mom who exposed me to a very damaging rapture propaganda film at a very young age is also one of these kinds of christians:

"Some Christians say that God does not judge, since He finds 'all to be precious'."

it's hard to understand how the two can coexist but i am thankful that if i had to have the bad luck of being raised in such a strictly religious household, at least it was of this brand: tolerant and kind and loving. this kind of christian upbringing is sadly very rare.

The end of the world

i once read that the majority of people who suffer from severe anxiety and/or panic attacks were raised in strict religious households. i'm not sure if this is why i have these problems, but i do recall severe anxiety plaguing me from at least age 7, when i was shown a christian propaganda apocalypse film in the baptist church were i was taken 3x a week for 18 years. this movie is the most horrifying story i can think of: the movie opens with a mom waking up and her husband is there, her children are there and she's brushing her teeth or something and suddenly she turns around and her whole familly is...just...gone. she runs out into the street in her suburban neighborhood screaming and crying and yelling for her family and the streets are empty. she then runs desperately in to her town center and she sees this huge long line of people wrapping around a street corner and going into some sort of "official" building like a bank or social security office (more likely). the people in line are waiting there to get their mark, a number on their foreheads. these are the people who have been left behind because they did not accept jesus as their personal savior when they had the chance. now they are left on earth for the devil and jesus to fight over, with a final decision being made on judgement day, a day in the near future when they will have another chance to choose jesus or spend eternity in hell.

yep, that's kind of when my anxiety level was given all new meaning. the next day i accepted jesus as my personal savior in church along with my 5-yr-old sister, who actually led the way. she was even more frightened by the movie than me. i've asked my mom what she was thinking by letting us, such young children, see a movie that was so damaging to such young minds, scaring the living shit out of us etc. she doesn't remember it. she also doesn't remember me swallowing a handful aspirin in a fit of rage at age 12. maybe i don't blame her, those were terrible times.

i have no idea what this movie was called and i don't want to see it again, but i am curious, somewhat. this morning i found this on google, and some opinions about something like what i saw, that i can agree with, particularly:

"If you grew up around a certain strain of American fundamentalist Christianity over the past several decades, the 1972 film, along with other "rapture movies" has a terrifying cultural resonance that probably still haunts you to this day."

and it is true, there will always be a part of me that believes the RAPTURE is actually fucking possible. that's the most insane part of my mind. it's The Fear that lives In There.

"...to experience their full power, you have to have undergone a terrible initiation into them, one only an evangelist would encourage anyone else to undertake. No one, having gone through this initiation and since rejected the beliefs that produced it, would hope to share the experience with another."

true true. that movie provided in me the singular most horrifying sense of panic i have ever experienced. i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

link

ad-Vantage-ed

it's pretty unbelievable where i live. i can only figure i got so lucky because i suffered so hard living on 6th street for four years in my mid to late 20s.

this is the tenderloin:



the tenderloin gave me a nervous breakdown midway through my sentence, as it also did to my close friend (J) who lived upstairs from me in two seperate buildings during those four long years. people sprawled all over the sidewalks with shit-encrusted pants, anorexic dogs and scabby eyes really got to me after a while. i totally lost it, but then i got a place with a deck that has this view in the super-clean-homo-castro:





there are two and five million dollar houses everywhere. i think i'm the only person living in a apartment for three square blocks. a million dollar house in my neighborhood is a shoebox.







i'm not bragging, i'm just like WHOA DUDE, i lived in HELL before and now i'm here, with barely a change in salary! someone smiled on me!

"Showdown at the DK Corral"

East Bay Ray of the legendary Dead Kennedys is a friend of a friend of mine. He has attended many of the same social events in the past as I have. During the time that he and the other guys were suing Jello Biafra for stealing money from the band via their back catalog, there happened to be a bunch of parties. At one such party he walked in and everyone said hi, hey, how's it going Ray? He took one look around and said, "Welllllll, there's been a showdown at the DK corral."

(ray, klaus and DH won the case)

Funnily enough, Jello lives right across the street from me in a particularly ugly, albeit monstrous house, seen here...(the brown one in the middle)



I wonder how many punk rockers live in mansions. I bet Ray doesn't but then again, he wasn't the given the money that he rightfully earned! It was stolen by his pal who lives in this mansion! OOOPS!!

I'm not very bright. I just want to make that very clear. NOT SMART! I want people to get used to this idea please. I'm tired of hearing of disappointments in me when I do something dumb. Guess what? It's because I'm NOT VERY BRIGHT!! Got it?

(this has been a public service announcement.)

Happy Birthday

to Nick Rhodes. i remember that it's nick rhodes' birthday from when i was 13. i can't remember when i have money in the bank or not, but i will never forget nick rhodes' birthday. he wasn't even my favorite duran. WTF?

Happy "Do Whatever I Want Day" or "Newest Inductee Into Boys-Only Club"

my first thought of the day today was "that was a dream that was a dream not real not real not real a dream." i struggled to convince myself that my dream was a dream, not something that exists here, on earth, but this proved difficult as the distinctive feelings, the experiences, the residual emotional repsonses to everything that had happened in my dream kept stinging. do our brains record the experiences we have in our dreams as real or not. i mean, can we scar ourselves?!

second thought was, "not going to work today. won't be that missed. not going." at that moment today was assigned "do whatever i want day."

Happy Do Whatever I Want Day!

this is very rare. this is a holiday that hasn't come around in years, maybe. but here it is.

the trot went like this: get up go drop off check at shrink's house in noe valley, get coffee at starbucks, look at real estate magazine pictures for an hour, go to grocery store, walk home. on the way home take pictures of houses i love, views i love including the view from my deck, one of the best, suddenly feel like i've got the squirts coming on, walk faster, walk in house, put groceries down right away, definitely take time to lock door (paranoid idea #22: some freak will follow me into my house and rape me), race to the bathroom and see, oh my god, how funny i have totally had a little squirt in my pants! this is a first, this is disgusting, finish business, stand up, get new underwear and EWWW! what IS THIS! it's shit all over my clean underwear, i go back in bathroom and look at toilet and see i somehow shat on the toilet seat on the way down and it got on my actual BUTT, oh my GODDDDDD!! i sort of clean it up and then decide a shower is absolutely necessary at this very second, fuck the toilet, get in shower, get out, eat, write this.

so it could be said, in the most ladylike of terms, that i can now join the previously exclusive boys club "The Time (s) I Crapped My Pants." i now have a story to share with the boys in the stoners circle. hooray! i have to assume this is my rightful punishment for bailing on my coworkers, but guess what...it's pretty much worth it!

Good morning

morning soundtrack (shuffle) after a very very good evening i will not attempt to describe for fear of making others jealous.

1. wilco - i'm the man who loves you
love this song. don't know any of their other songs. they're a little bit country, or something, but i also get the feeling they've taken a lot of acid. just a feeling.

2. john lennon - nobody told me
i wish john lennon was still alive. hilarious, irreverant, radical and dangerously smart.

3. ween - right the ways
skip. guy put this on my ipod. i love ween, but some of these songs have no right to pop up in the morning.

4. the hives - main offender
i like working out to the hives. they are the fastest band i ever saw, live. some of their songs grind my nerves. this is not one of those.

5. white stripes - now mary
beautiful. every time i hear the white stripes i dream of shredding on the guitar.

6. green day - fashion victim
skip. great guitar rhythm in the beginning, then sounds like all their other songs that sound the same, which isn't all their songs, just the ones that sound the same.

7. frank black - fu manchu
one of the biggest geniuses of our time. five bridges in a song is nothing to him and each one of them is amazing.

8. babes in toyland - house
i love kat. she is the tiniest, most feminine, most adorable, grind-your-head-into-the cement asskicker in grunge rock. she is HCL personified. LOVE her, WISH I WAS her. "stub my toes running to your house. STUB MY TOES RUNNING TO YOUR HOUSE. if this is love, is this what it feels like, this is love this is what it feels like. OH MY GOD IT FEELS LIKE LOVE."

9. white stripes - broken bricks
jack white vomits red and purple. he must.

10. flaming lips - it overtakes me
this song has so many elements that i love including hand clapping. the problem is wayne says "it overtakes me" TOO many times. like just 10 too many times. when i have insomnia, this is one of the songs playing on the broken record player in my head making me dig my fingernails into my arms.

11. janes addiction - up the beach
skipped after halfway. i was in the mood for some janes but i wanted to hear some singing.

12. radiohead - morning bell
skip. too sad.

13. david bowie - seven years in tibet
i can't believe i just discovered this record last september. it was made in like 1999. it is brilliant.

14. pink floyd - fearless
skip. why does this song always come up? it's beautiful but it requires major stone-itity to enjoy because it's just sooooooooo mellowwwwwwww.

15. the shins - pink bullets
great song. is this the one that will change my life forever?

16. gary numan - cars
fucking a. this songs turns me into an overexcited teenager EVERY TIME!! AHHHH!!!!

Animals in Casts

please forgive me for thinking this is funny...really funny.

(i just discovered this blog. good stuff here, yep.)

And

if i was a dog, i'd be a blindfolded bird.

You dog!

If guy was a dog he'd be a golden retriever.

friendly
golden
sweet
enthusiastic
pretty
energetic
non-discriminatory
loyal

flim flam floogie floo

shimmy sham
shock a lock
lick a dick
flick a mick
shoogey doo
lottie la
lackey lack
hockey flock
flobie flea
sugar sea
terra shite
flora mite

if you don't
know what to do
take a big whiff
out of your shoe.

Flipping It

"Flipping it" is about taking a situation that you hate and making it something you can tolerate or even like. I learned about this very valuable tool from what some would say an unlikely source: Tom Green. Tom Green of "Freddy Got Fingered," Tom Green who is famous for interviewing people with a piece of shit on the end of his microphone and many other hilarious and juevenile tv stunts. He talked about flipping it in an interview in Rolling Stone in 2001. He said when he first found out that he had testicular cancer, he was horrified of the public finding out. He thought no one would ever find him funny again. "No one finds sick people funny," he thought. But instead of freaking out, he flipped it and made the now infamous Cancer Special Show where he had television crews follow him around pre-surgery, right up until he went "under" and as soon as he got out. He even had his TV cohost feel up the removed testicles on camera while he was in post-op. Tom Green totally effectively flipped the worst thing that ever happened to him and made it something funny.

Flipping it is truly one of the most inspirational and important tools for dealing with this extremely testy situation called life, that i have ever come across.

I flipped it recently, but i have been unsuccessful in sustaining the flip. What i'm wondering is, are there other elements at work here? What if I really just don't like the situation and for good reasons? What if flipping it is lying? How do I know? What if I attempt a flip and later take it back? What are the chances that my intuition is telling me something else and I should listen to it?

Dammit. I thought flipping it was infallible. Now I'm not so sure.

have a great weekend my friends...

hangin' with yr hens.

schiz

yes.
no.
black.
white.
up.
down.
forward.
back.
jacked.
stacked.

"It been long time. I see you in eyeball!"

these cards are hilarious and buyable...

A Modern Tale

a coworker of mine had his bike stolen from inside the building. he posted a listing on craigslist about this. a woman in palo alto saw the listing after buying a bike from a palo alto bike shop that matched the craigslist description. she called my coworker. he went to palo alto and identified it. they went to the bike shop and found the bike shop had bought it from a balding older man in a 3-piece suit who acted suspiciously but provided identification during the sale of the stolen bike to the bike shop. the bike shop called the cops, the cops will arrest the guy. my friend got his bike back but re-sold it to the nice girl who saw the craigslist listing for the same price she had bought it from the shop. she was stoked. my coworker is vindicated. the thief will be caught. the bike shop loses no money whatsoever. everyone wins.

craigslist is a powerful tool, is it not?